“Good morning and thank you all for attending our results presentation. As you can see, the efficient integration to simplify the stewardship of our business has led to an excellence of integrity and will transform our chosen quadrant.”

Banking buzzwords in abundance

As painful as constructing that sentence might have been, banks have used its buzzwords
in abundance during their fourth-quarter earnings’ presentations.

The word “efficient” (or derivatives of it) appeared more than 60 times in earnings announcements and presentations delivered by Barclays, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, UBS and Credit Suisse, according to Financial News research. “Transform”, a particular favourite of Barclays and the title of its plan to recast its strategy, was used 54 times, while “integrate” (or derivatives of it) appeared 50 times. Other words used repeatedly include “simplify” and “quadrant”, which appeared 12 times in just one speech by Barclays’ chief executive Antony Jenkins.

Earlier this month, a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards asked Jenkins to stop using management jargon. He responded: “That unfortunately may be the way I speak.”